Desires of the Heart
by Jessahme Wren
Summary: Felicity discovers that Oliver witnessed her kissing Ray. Set immediately post 3x07. Olicity oneshot.


My first Olicity fic. I've fallen in love with these two and I only hope I did them justice. Any comments are so appreciated :).

-0-0-0-

The blue-green light from the computer monitors emitted a stark luminescence; driving the shadows away from her desk but leaving no real warmth. Felicity stood in her bare feet at the floor-to-ceiling windows of her new office. The lights of Starling City twinkled and strobed in a discordant symphony, painting the soft angles of her face in muted patterns.

"Vice President of Palmer Technologies," she said quietly to herself, trying out the words. They flowed seamlessly over her tongue, and she smiled. Her hand went up to press the necklace that wasn't there, and she felt a momentary pang of disappointment. She sighed. It was after midnight, after all. Back to reality.

Only none of this was fantasy. She had worn a couture dress, royal blue and perfect, and ten million dollars worth of equally perfect diamonds that Ray had spent ten grand on just to rent for the night. _For her._

_Ray._ His face appeared with the name and she briefly touched her lips, remembering their kiss. She smiled, but it quickly relaxed into a wistful twitch of her mouth. She chewed her lower lip thoughtfully. Ray was not perfect.

She'd seen it after he had kissed her (after _they _had kissed, she corrected herself), the ghost in his eyes, the trepidation. Ray had a past...Ray had a hurt that was deeply rooted, some pain or regret she had caught only a glimpse of as he had broken their kiss. He was much like Oliver in that respect; he kept his pain pushed down beneath the weight of his responsibilities.

She closed her eyes, resting her hand against the cool pane of glass separating her from the outside world. An inexplicable twinge of pain stabbed at her insides at the thought of him; it was sharper than the hollow ache that accompanied her most nights and thankfully more transient.

She swallowed. _Have I done a wrong thing?_ she thought briefly. She smoothed the dress at her sides, blowing out a quick breath. _No_, she assured herself. _It's not wrong to want to be with someone. To want to be happy_.

Felicity walked back to her desk, fussing with the hair she'd spent far too long on for such a short evening. She clamped a bobby pin between her teeth, taking her hair down as she settled into the chair facing the computer monitors. Her high heels still rested on the floor under her desk where she had slipped them off earlier, and she bumped them with her feet as she stretched her legs.

A long tendril of flaxen hair fell over her shoulder as she pulled up the server encryption from earlier, her keen eyes flitting from the lines of code in front of her to the security feed from the last hour that absently cycled on the adjacent screen. She let the program run and leaned back in her chair. A few seconds later, on one of the four camera angles evident in the viewing pane, she saw herself at her desk.

She zoomed in, letting the image fill the screen. Security feeds were monitored in real-time downstairs, but Felicity had rerouted the archival images to her office a few days after she took the job with Palmer. The footage was just an hour old.

Felicity sat in the dark and watched with mild curiosity as Ray walked into the office, that endearing smile that brightened his whole face tugging at the corners of his mouth. She watched herself rise to meet him, the camera in the ceiling behind her desk an objective eye reaching over them and into the murky shadows of the hall leading to her office. And then, they kissed.

She leaned in unwittingly, watching Ray's hand as it moved around to the middle of her back, his fingers splayed across her spine. Felicity swallowed. She didn't remember that; she didn't remember him touching her like that. A warm blush colored her cheeks, and she smiled. No one could see her smiling in the dark (not even the camera from this angle) and she wasn't sorry.

The touch was perfectly chaste of course, but it was also tender, courtly even. Perfectly Ray.

She was so intent on the image before her that she almost didn't see it...the movement at the corner of the screen. Felicity ran her fingers over the keyboard, redirecting the angle of the camera and lightening the image. Her breathing quickened. _Was someone watching them? _

The last breath caught in her throat as the pixilated image began to clear on the screen in front of her. She zoomed in and a figure began to emerge from the dark.

She saw his eyes first. Blue eyes, wide with surprise and...disappointment? A face materialized around them. A stricken face. His face.

_Oliver._

"Oh no," she managed. "Oh no oh no oh no." Felicity moved her hands over the keys as if manipulating the image would change the fact that Oliver had seen her kissing Ray Palmer.

She played the footage back again, this time focusing on Oliver's face. She winced. _He had come. He was here_. Oliver had come to her, on her terms and on her turf. The importance of that fact did not escape her.

If he had come to her, she had to go to him.

-0-0-0-

Pinging his cell phone was easy enough, although she didn't make a habit of it. She'd only done it three other times outside of a mission, and each time she'd felt guilty.

Tonight, however, it was warranted.

Felicity stood outside of John Diggle's apartment, working up the courage to knock. She finally did and a few moments later Diggle opened the door. He looked at her briefly, and then smiled. She still wore the dress from her dinner with Ray and her hair was partially down. Instead of the heels, she wore a pair of red low-top sneakers with the laces tucked.

"Felicity," he said smoothly. "You here to join us?"

She started to say something, but clamped her lips together. "No," she said quickly. "Not tonight. I, uh. I don't mean to interrupt. I mean I do," she corrected, "because I need to speak to Oliver." She strained to see over Diggle's shoulder as his form blocked most of the doorway, going up on the toes of her red sneakers. She made a face. "Is he here?"

Diggle still wore the soft smile from earlier, only now he seemed somewhat amused. "Yeah, he's here." He turned and called to Oliver, and Felicity took a few steps back into the hallway as she heard his approaching steps.

Diggle returned to the small, cozy assemblage around the table and left them in the hallway alone. Oliver closed the door behind them.

"Hey," he said quietly. He looked relieved to see her, yet at the same time a little wary. "What are you doing here?"

She made a conscious effort to still her hands and met his eyes. "You saw us," she said flatly. She blinked. "In my office."

She watched his breathing change before he discretely corrected it. A shadow fell over his face. He swallowed hard. "It's your life, Felicity," he said a little rougher than he intended. He managed a small smile that never reached his eyes. "You don't owe me any explanation."

He looked at her for another few seconds before she touched his arm, her hand lighting near the crook of his elbow. She squeezed softly. "I do," she said. "That was the first time that's happened." She was looking into his eyes now, and she saw the cool blue warm to aquamarine as he registered the significance of her words. She felt the tension in his arm relax.

Oliver exhaled, unable to hide the relief from his face before deftly concealing it. "It's ok, Felicity." He gave her a quick nod, overcompensating for the fact that nothing was ok. "We made our decisions," he said tightly.

She narrowed her eyes, and her hand moved smoothly up his arm until it rested at the base of his neck. "You made mine for me," she whispered. The light in the hall glittered in her liquid eyes, and her lips were slightly parted.

He wanted very much to kiss her. His throat grew tight at the sight of her; her blond hair partially down and framing her face, the little red sneakers she wore that betrayed her height as a few inches shorter than how he was used to seeing her.

He pressed his mouth to hers, kissing her roughly. Oliver couldn't suppress a sigh as he felt her relax against him. He moved his hand from her hair and down her arm, his fingers closing at the waist of a dress worn for another man. It didn't matter; he didn't care. When he held her like this, decisions, Ray Palmer, and the Arrow didn't exist.

He pulled back finally, and she rested her hands on his chest. Their faces were inches apart. "Never mistake my decision for what I truly want," he said lowly.

She closed her eyes tight. Felicity moved her hand up to rest on his shoulder, and she wore the same broken expression as when he had kissed her in the hallway of the hospital.

"That's somehow worse Oliver," she said quietly. There were tears in her eyes, but her face was impassive. "It's a choice." She moistened her lips, tasting their kiss. She let her hand drop to her side.

He watched her retreat a few steps before he was able to respond. He felt stunned, weakened. "You know my reasons," he said tightly.

She turned to look at him. "I know them. That doesn't mean I understand them." She smiled at him sadly. "Goodnight Oliver."

Oliver stood at the edge of a shadow outside of Diggle's door and watched as she turned the corner. He listened to the soft scrub of her sneakers in the hallway until the sound faded and was gone.

Tomorrow, she would go to work with Ray Palmer. Tomorrow she would go on with her life. And tomorrow, he would be the Arrow.

-0-0-0-


End file.
